YouTube. HTML 5 First, Flash 2nd. Steve Was Right After All

Remember when Android users rejoiced and poured scorned that a lowly iPhone couldn’t display flash. Remember that Steve Jobs penned his his famous “Thoughts on Flash”. Hell I’ve even posted an article on how to reduce flash CPU usage by up to 50% just by right clicking on any video.

The reason why cpu usage drops so dramatically with a simple right click is down to Flash pretty much scanning for the mouse and mouse interaction. By bringing up a different menu to focus on, part of the mac OS, cpu usage dies. Go on, fire up activity monitor and try for yourself.

Jobs famously said that Flash was too battery hungry, too unreliable, too insecure, too slow, and too closed to be a wise platform for the mobile-first developers of then-tomorrow. And people scoffed at the time.

But who’s laughing now?

Today, Google announced that YouTube is finally ditching Flash for HTML5 video by default.

“Other content providers like Netflix and Vimeo, as well as companies like Microsoft and Apple have embraced HTML5 and been key contributors to its success,”

said Google, pointing out the obvious: Flash content has been on the decline for years. Even Microsoft have pretty much pulled the Plug on their own version of flash.. Well ok not flash but a medium for delivering video content with DRM before Adobe realised their offering was in it’s final death throws.

There will be a cost somewhere down the line as HTML 5 content is dealt with server side not user side.

Now that video has been conquered with a universal format how about we start working on another universal format other than word documents posted online for job applications.

At least we’re hopefully going to start seeing the end of the dreaded “your version of flash is out of date” or translated “whoops another bug’s been discovered, update now for your own sake”